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To Make a Chicken Tart
Due Libri di Cucina B: no. 42
If you want to make a pie of chickens, one can
do it in four ways. Take them and dismember
them and fry them in lard and get boiled
shoulder meat beaten very well and good cheese
with it and good finest spices and eggs that you
need, and put the chickens and these things
together, and make the pie, and annoint it of the
top with yolks of egg with saffron, and to all these
things one must give salt.
3 c flour ⅛ t cloves
1 c water ⅛ t pepper
¼ t salt ¼ t cinnamon
2 ½ oz Parmesan ⅛ t galingale
¾ lb pork shoulder ¼ t ginger
1 lb chicken 2 egg yolks
3 T lard 10 threads saffron
4 eggs ¼ t salt
⅛ t nutmeg
Knead together flour, water and salt, roll
out to about a 10" circle, use it to line a 9"
greased pie pan. With a fork prick the shell on
the bottom and along the bottom edge so as to
minimize lifting from steam underneath. Bake
25 minutes at 350°.
Cut pork into several chunks, boil in 2 c
water for about half an hour. Drain it.
Dismember the chicken to the smallest
coherent pieces, fry in the lard at medium
high for 5-10 minutes until brown. Put into
the pie crust.
Grate the cheese, mash the pork in a large
mortar then combine it with eggs, spices,
cheese and salt. Use this to fill in the pie crust
under and between the pieces of chicken—the
endoring will look better on chicken than on
the mashed pork mixture. Grind the saffron in
a small mortar, add egg yolks, stir together so
the saffron colors the egg yolks, use the
mixture to paint the top of the tart.
Bake ½ hour at 350°. Serve.
It works better with boneless chicken
quarters, since then you can cut the pie
without running into chicken bones, but pretty
clearly that isn't how the original was done. It
may have used a bigger pie and smaller
42
chickens, which would reduce the problem.
Or the pie might have been eaten out of the
crust rather than cut in wedges in the modern
fashion.
Chawettys
Two Fifteenth Century p. 48
Take buttys of Vele, and mynce hem smal, or
Porke, and put on a potte; take Wyne, and caste
þer-to pouder of Gyngere, Pepir, and Safroun,
and Salt, and a lytel verþous, and do hem in a
cofyn with yolks of Eyroun, and kutte Datys and
Roysonys of Coraunce, Clowys, Maces, and þen
ceuere þin cofyn, and lat it bake tyl it be y-now.
1 ½ lb pork or veal 5 threads saffron
double 9" pie crust ¾ t salt
⅜ c dates 1 t verjuice
⅜ c currants ¾ c red wine
½ t mace ¼ t cloves
¾ t ginger 9 egg yolks
¾ t pepper
Cut the meat up fine (½" cubes or so).
Simmer it in a cup and a half of water for
about 20 minutes. Make pie crust, fill with
meat, chopped dates and currants. Mix spices,
wine, verjuice and egg yolks and pour over.
Put on a top crust. Bake in a 350° oven for 50
minutes, then 400° for 20 minutes or until the
crust looks done.
For Tarts owte of Lente
Pepys 1047 p. 27
Take nesche chese and pare hit and grynd hit
yn a morter and breke egges and do therto and
then put yn butter and creme and mess all well to
gethur put not to moche buttr ther yn if the chese
be fatte make a coffyn of dowe and close ht above
with dowe and collor hit above with the yolkes of
eggs and bake hit well and sue hit furth.
7 ½ oz soft cheese 1 c cream
3 eggs double 9" pie crust
1 T butter 1 egg yolk
Mix ingredients (we used havarti for the
cheese), put in a pie shell, cover, bake 45
minutes at 375°; allow to cool before serving.